Body and Soul

in Ancient Philosophy
Edited by
Dorothea Frede and Burkhard Reis

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

 Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

I. Presocratics
Carl Huffman
The Pythagorean conception of the soul from Pythagoras to
Philolaus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Christian Schfer
Das Pythagorasfragment des Xenophanes und die Frage nach der
Kritik der Metempsychosenlehre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Brad Inwood
Empedocles and metempsychüsis: The critique of Diogenes of
Oenoanda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Anthony A. Long
Heraclitus on measure and the explicit emergence of rationality 87
Georg Rechenauer
Demokrits Seelenmodell und die Prinzipien der atomistischen
Physik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

II. Plato
David Sedley
Three kinds of Platonic immortality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Michael Erler
„Denn mit Menschen sprechen wir und nicht mit Göttern“.
Platonische und epikureische epimeleia tÞs psychÞs . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Gyburg Radke-Uhlmann
Die energeia des Philosophen – zur Einheit von literarischem
Dialog und philosophischer Argumentation in Platons Phaidon . 179
VIII Contents

Jan Szaif
Die aretÞ des Leibes: Die Stellung der Gesundheit in Platons
Güterlehre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

III. Aristotle
Gðnther Patzig
Körper und Geist bei Aristoteles –
zum Problem des Funktionalismus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Christopher Shields
The priority of soul in Aristotle’s De anima: Mistaking
categories? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
David Charles
Aristotle on desire and action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Friedemann Buddensiek
Aristoteles’ Zirbeldrüse? Zum Verhältnis von Seele und pneuma
in Aristoteles’ Theorie der Ortsbewegung der Lebewesen . . . . 309
Ursula Wolf
Aporien in der aristotelischen Konzeption des Beherrschten und
des Schlechten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

IV. Academy
John Dillon
How does the soul direct the body, after all? Traces of a dispute
on mind-body relations in the Old Academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

V. Hellenism
Keimpe Algra
Stoics on souls and demons: Reconstructing Stoic demonology 359
Tad Brennan
Stoic souls in Stoic corpses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
 Contents IX

Christopher Gill
Galen and the Stoics: What each could learn from the other
about embodied psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Martha C. Nussbaum
Philosophical norms and political attachments: Cicero and
Seneca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

VI. Philosophers of Early Christianity

Jonathan Barnes
Anima Christiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Therese Fuhrer
Der Geist im vollkommenen Körper. Ein Gedankenexperiment
in Augustins De civitate dei 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
Theo Kobusch
Die Auferstehung des Leibes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
 Introduction

1 The topic
The body-soul problem is not an invention of modernity, but has a long
history that can be traced back to the early age of Greek culture. The
problem is also not confined to Greek culture: ever since humankind
has been able to think at all it has been confronted by the question of
what happens at the moment of death, when life is extinguished with
the last breath. Whether the ‘exhalation’ of life means the end of
human existence, or something remains that becomes separate from
the body at the moment of death, is therefore an existential question
that has received and still receives different answers in different cultures.
In Greek as well as Latin the association of the word ‘soul’ with the
breath of life is already clear from etymology: the Greek word for
soul, psychÞ, just like its Latin counterpart, anima, originally meant
‘breath/breeze’ or ‘wind’. The notion that this breath should have a
continued existence is already present in Homer, who reserves the
name of ‘psychÞ’ for the souls of the dead. Exactly when the word
‘soul’ came to designate not only the principle of life in the living or-
ganism but also to apply to all psycho-physical faculties is still a matter
of controversy, in view of the scarcity of sources dating from the 7th
and 6th centuries BC. But even the much richer material provided by
the poets of the 5th century does not present a unified picture. Because
there was no orthodoxy in Greek religion, no firm set of convictions
emerged over the centuries concerning the nature of the soul and its
fate after death. The literary sources from the Archaic age through
late antiquity therefore present a diffuse picture of belief and unbelief,
of fear and hope. The artwork and other archaeological artefacts dating
from these periods provide vivid testimonies to this state of affairs, as is
witnessed by the image reproduced in the posters and invitations for the
conference, as well as on the jacket of the volume itself: painted on a
white-grounded lekythos by the ‘Sabouroff-painter’ sometime in the
5th century, this image on this grave-offering depicts the God Hermes,
with his emblematic traveller’s hat and staff, as he guides a dead young
2 Introduction

woman to Charon’s barge, surrounded by small winged creatures, the

souls of the dead.
Given the absence of a uniform conception of the nature of the soul
in the ancient Greek world, it is quite natural that it was approached and
treated in quite different ways by Greek philosophers. Nor were discus-
sions of the nature of the soul confined to questions of life and death:
the philosophers were also concerned with the functions of the soul of
living beings, including the relationship of the soul to the physical func-
tions of the body, as well as to the cognitive and emotional faculties.
Notwithstanding the diversity of the theories that emerged concerning
the respective natures of the body and soul, there were, overall, two
models of explanation of this relationship, namely a monist and a dualist
one. The monist model is based on the assumption of a very close in-
terrelation between the body and soul, so that the soul is not even iden-
tifiable as a separate entity from the body, and can be treated as a mere
aspect of the living body. The dualist model, on the other hand, presup-
poses a much looser connection between body and soul, so that certain
dualists regarded the soul as a stranger on earth, living in coerced part-
nership with the body for a limited time only. The two models had
many different variants, so that each model comprised a wide spectrum
of possibilities. Moreover, heterodoxy of this kind among the philoso-
phers is not only witnessed from early on, it lasted through the ages to
the end of antiquity. Depending on the model and its cosmological pre-
suppositions, the soul was either conceived primarily in terms of phys-
iological, spiritual, or intellectual functions, so that different types of
‘psychology’ were developed by different philosophers and expanded
in their schools.
Thus, since antiquity, the soul-body problem has been conceived of
in both a narrower and a wider sense. On the one hand there is the
question of the nature of the relationship between the body and soul it-
self, where the main concerns are their similarity, dissimilarity, or even
opposition; their unity and separability and their dependence and inde-
pendence. On the other hand there is the broader issue of how the dif-
ferent perspectives on the soul-body problem have shaped, and been in-
fluenced in turn, by theories of moral and developmental psychology,
epistemology, education, as well as by theology. The articles in this vol-
ume not only address topics within this wide spectrum, they are also
concerned with these questions in quite different periods in the history
of ancient Greek philosophy, from the Presocratics and the philosophers
 Introduction 3

of the Classical and Hellenistic ages to the theologians of early Christi-

anity.
As has been remarked in the preface, the order in which the papers
in this volume are presented does not follow the organizational plan of
the conference, which was divided into into five sections based on the
following broad topics: the relation of body and soul from the physio-
logical-scientific perspective (section 1); problems of epistemology –
concerning the relation between sense-perception and the intellect (sec-
tion 2); the body and soul as problems of moral psychology (section 3);
the problems of freedom of the will, responsibility, and determinism
(section 4); the relation between the soul and body from the theological
perspective (section 5). The choice of these five topics was intended to
reflect the complexity and importance of the body-soul question, and to
encourage participants and audience members alike to consider the di-
versity of, and the interconnection between, the areas of ancient Greek
thought influenced by these discussions. Questions of epistemology, for
example, may require an elucidation of the physiological conditions,
while the problem of free will is tied to physiology as well as to episte-
mology and also has consequences for moral psychology. Moreover, in
virtue of the fact that in antiquity, the conception of nature was inti-
mately connected to the belief in the gods, the subject of ancient
Greek theology cannot be treated in isolation, just as it in turn cannot
be kept separate from questions of moral psychology. An unavoidable
result of this approach to the body-soul question was that there was
considerable overlap in the subjects covered by the various presenta-
tions, as the speakers tried to do justice to the various ramifications of
their individual themes.
The choice of topic was left to the speaker’s discretion. Surprising
though it may seem, discussion of problems in Plato and Aristotle did
not predominate among the topics chosen, as the importance of these
two giants of ancient philosophy might have let one expect. There
are, of course, several articles dedicated to central questions concerning
the soul-body problem in Plato and Aristotle; but altogether there was
an even balance between the Presocratics, the philosophers of the Clas-
sical and Hellenistic ages, and those of late antiquity. The great interest
of historians of philosophy in the Presocratics is of long standing; they
are not just treated as the precursors of the philosophers of the Classical
age, but as important witnesses of, and collaborators in the creation of
Greek culture as such. In recent years these studies have been intensi-
fied, especially with regard to the school of the Pythagoreans. In addi-
4 Introduction

tion, certain changes of interpretation of the philosophers of the Clas-

sical age have resulted in a renewed scrutiny of the philosophy of
their predecessors. The turning to themes in the Hellenistic and later
ages may not only be due to the fact that the ‘psychology’ of Plato
and Aristotle has already received so much attention that experts now
prefer to confine shorter articles to more specialist topics within this
subject, but also to the fact that there has been a general shift of interest
to the philosophers of the Hellenistic and later Graeco-Roman age, an
area that had long been the domain of a few specialists only. The recep-
tion of pagan ancient philosophy by early Christian theologians has also
become an area of intensive study that has been spurred at least in part
by a better understanding of the philosophers of the Hellenistic age. All
these developments are reflected in the present volume, which aims,
therefore, not only to convey information about the diverse approaches
taken to the body-soul problem by ancient Greek thinkers to all comers,
but also to provide a snap-shot of the present stage of research dedicated
to the problem of body and soul in ancient philosophy as a whole.
It is to be hoped that the times when scholars had to prove the ‘so-
cial relevance’ of their research are gone for good. Nowadays there is no
reason to hide the fact that one’s field of interest is history for history’s
sake. That statement also applies to the interest in the history of philos-
ophy. At the same time, there is no reason not to continue to explore
the relevance of the insights provided by the ancient world for the pres-
ent age. In view of the complexity of the treatment of the problem of
body and soul in ancient philosophy it would in fact be quite strange if
ancient thinkers had nothing to contribute to the present intensive de-
bates of this issue, despite the fact that ‘body and soul’ have long been
superseded by ‘brain and mind’. Granting that due to the enormous in-
crease of knowledge in recent years, particularly in the area of neuro-
physiology, fruitful discussions of the ‘body and soul/brain and mind’
problem presuppose special knowledge at a high level, the treatment
of this problem is nevertheless based on the same alternatives as it was
in antiquity: monism and dualism are still in fundamental opposition,
just as there are reductionist tendencies of all sorts that stand in need
of critical and, if possible, objective appraisals of their basic presupposi-
tions and answers to such questions as whether it is meaningful to speak
of the essential nature of a person’s character and of freedom of the will.
Notwithstanding the great advances made by the neurosciences, the ex-
planations of the connection between neurological and cognitive as well
as emotional processes arguably remain hardly less hypothetical than
 Introduction 5

those put forward by the thinkers of antiquity. The persistence of such

riddles reveals the problematic character of some of the abstruse conclu-
sions that nowadays even respectable scientists feel entitled to draw with
respect to the mutual dependence of mind and brain. The evaluation of
the possibilities and limitations of the cognitive and neurosciences is,
however, not the only area that might conceivably profit from a
study of the thought of antiquity; it should be also mentioned that
many proponents of the religious faith in the immortality of the soul
still see themselves as confronted by the same mysteries that were already
recognized and studied by those who held analogous views in antiquity.

2 The contents of this volume

I. Presocratics

This volume starts with an article by Carl Huffman on the early Pytha-
goreans entitled: “The Pythagorean conception of the soul from Pytha-
goras to Philolaus”. Huffman does not confine himself to the controver-
sial questions of the nature of the soul and the terminology used by the
Pythagoreans, but also attempts to draw a consistent picture of the Py-
thagorean doctrine of the soul as a whole. He does so by drawing on
four sources: (1) the early testimonia on Pythagoras, (2) the oral maxims
known as akousmata, which may go back to Pythagoras and formed the
basis of the Pythagorean way of life, (3) the fragments of Philolaus, and
(4) the Pythagorean Precepts of Aristoxenus, which describe a Pytha-
gorean ethical system and date to the early fourth century. These four
sources indicate that the soul was conceived of as the seat of sensation
and emotion only, as distinct from the intellect. This kind of soul fits
well with the doctrine of transmigration, because it could also transmi-
grate between human beings and animals. What passes from body to
body is, then, a personality characterized by emotion and behaviour,
which is fashioned by intellect, when it is born in a human body.
The contribution by Christian Schfer is also dedicated to the Pytha-
goreans, as its title indicates: “The Pythagoras-fragment of Xenophanes
and the problem of his critique of the doctrine of metempsychüsis”. Schä-
fer takes up the well-known controversy of whether fragment B 7 in
fact addresses Pythagoras and whether it is meant as a mockery or as a
criticism at all. In his treatment of the question, Schäfer proceeds
from the minimalist interpretation that nothing whatsoever can be
6 Introduction

said about Pythagoras’ doctrine of the soul to the maximalist assumption

that Pythagoras claimed that the soul was immortal. In addition Schäfer
tackles the question of to what extent it is possible to identify similarities
and differences between the doctrines of Pythagoras and Xenophanes.
Finally, Schäfer contemplates the possibility, backed by new information
derived from Neo-Platonist sources, of whether the Fragment should
not be interpreted in an altogether different spirit: as a political joke.
The article by Brad Inwood, “Empedocles and metempsychüsis: The
critique of Diogenes of Oenoanda”, is concerned with the Empedo-
clean doctrine of the soul. The author starts out with the critique that
Diogenes, a late Epicurean of the 2nd century AD, vents against Empe-
docles. Diogenes, however, refers to psychai whereas Empedocles deals
with daimones, and appears to be mainly concerned with the status
and nature of the souls between incarnations. In his paper Inwood raises
several questions with respect to Diogenes’ fragment: (1) Does Dio-
genes’ text provide evidence on Empedocles’ theory or does it represent
just another episode in the history of the reception of Empedocles in
antiquity? (2) What is the effect of assuming that the daimones are
souls, and is Empedocles theory defensible if the equation is misguided?
(3) To what extent is the alleged persistence of the daimones compatible
with the Empedoclean doctrine of cosmic cycles? According to In-
wood, a careful consideration of the Epicurean objections suggests
that these do not seriously undermine the Empedoclean doctrine, but
rather contribute to a proper assessment of its distinctive features.
The contribution by Anthony Long, entitled: “Heraclitus on measure
and the explicit emergence of rationality”, aims to show that Heraclitus’
doctrine of the logos rather than invoking any pre-existing concept of
rationality was the result of the process of discovering that very thing
by reflecting on the meaning and function of key concepts of his
own thought. Long shows this by analyzing various concepts that Her-
aclitus uses in his elucidation of logos, such as metron, nomos, harmoniÞ,
kosmos, dikÞ, and süphrosynÞ. That metron, in the sense of measure and
proportion, plays a central role in the analysis of logos is shown by
Long’s discussion of the respective concepts in early Greek poetry on
the one hand, and on the other hand, by his anticipation of the impor-
tant role that metron in connection with süphrosynÞ will play not only
within Platonic cosmology, logic, ethics, and psychology, but also in
the philosophy of the Stoa.
The physicalist aspect of Presocratic philosophy is addressed by
Georg Rechenauer’s discussion, “Democritus’ model of the soul and the
 Introduction 7

principles of atomistic physics”. Rechenauer points up the particular dif-

ficulties that result from Democritus’ materialistic position for his ex-
planation of mental and psychological processes. For example, although
Democritus posited the existence of special soul-atoms, his theory does
not adequately account for the qualitative distinctions among the afore-
mentioned processes, given that the soul-atoms represent ‘dead matter’
with purely quantitative properties. Rechenauer also examines the
shortcomings of the Democritean model in accounting for the interac-
tion between mind and body, and with regard to the question of the
extent to which it is possible to view mental and physical processes as
identical. The author therefore carefully reviews the relevance of further
assumptions that can be invoked to justify the Democritean model of
the soul and opts for a relation of mutual dependence, with the soul ful-
filling a leading function.

II. Plato

That the treatment of the problematic of body and soul in Plato, of all
philosophers, is discussed in only four contributions is partly the conse-
quence of the general shift of interest mentioned above, but partly also
due to happenstance, since two of the participants at the conference had
made previous commitments for the publication of their articles.
The discussion of Plato’s concern with the problem of body and
soul is opened by David Sedley’s contribution, “Three kinds of Platonic
immortality”. He intends to show that Plato with his resourceful argu-
ments for the soul’s immortality saw himself less as an innovator than as
an exegete, clarifying the scientific or rational foundations of certain re-
ligious traditions about the soul’s long-term destiny. Now Plato’s dia-
logues themselves display a certain kind of heterodoxy. While in the
Phaedo, Plato’s Socrates is intent to prove the immortality of the soul
in a transcendent sense – i.e. on the basis of logical and metaphysical
considerations, in the Timaeus he lets the title figure propose the con-
ception of a kind of ‘conferred’ immortality, and in the Symposium,
the priestess Diotima seems to advocate a kind of ‘earned’ immortality.
It must remain an open question, therefore, what kind of ‘apotheosis’ of
the soul is most akin to Plato’s own position.
The Phaedo is also at the center of the other two contributions that
are primarily concerned with Plato. Michael Erler’s article, “‘For we
speak with humans, not with gods’. A comparison of the Platonic and
8 Introduction

the Epicurean epimeleia tÞs psychÞs”, starts out by contrasting the virtually
unaffected and therefore anti-tragic personality of Socrates with that of
his pupil Phaedo, who despite his subjection to strong emotions in view
of the imminent death of his beloved master and teacher Socrates, nev-
ertheless manages to keep his feelings under control. Erler not only
treats Phaedo’s personality as a model of the kind of control of the
pathÞ demanded by Plato in his critique of poetry in Book X of the Re-
public, but also discovers a convergence between these Platonic moral
standards and corresponding postulates in Epicurus. Erler also adds the
observation that Plato’s depiction of the personalities of Socrates and
that of Phaedo, when taken as the varying embodiments of the person-
ality of a ‘decent’ (epieikÞs) human being, anticipate the ideal of human-
kind of the Stoics on the one hand and that of the Epicureans on the
other.
The anti-tragic figure of Socrates is also the topic of the article by
Gyburg Radke-Uhlmann entitled “The energeia of the philosopher – on
the unity of literary dialogue and philosophical argumentation in Plato’s
Phaedo”. The author is concerned to show that this dialogue represents
the synthesis of tragedy and comedy that Socrates had demanded in the
Symposium. Just as pleasure and pain are presented as inextricably inter-
twined early in the Phaedo, so the depiction of Socrates’ death unfolds as
a ‘story with a happy end’. This happy end is constituted, on the one
hand, by the stringent arguments concerning the relation between
soul and body, culminating in the proof of the immortality of the
soul on the basis of the theory of forms, and, on the other hand, on
the dramatic staging of the discussion itself. According to the author
these two elements in a way represent the dialogue’s soul and body
and thereby illustrate Plato’s notion of the activity (energeia) that is char-
acteristic of the philosopher.
A relatively neglected topic is the concern of the discussion by Jan
Szaif: “The aretÞ of the body: The position of health in Plato’s doctrine
of goods”. Plato is usually taken to attribute to health the function of an
instrumental good with respect to human happiness. Szaif not only col-
lects and compares conflicting evidence concerning the happiness-relat-
ed effects of health and the detracting effects of ill-health, but subse-
quently also investigates the question in how far health is treated as an
intrinsic and as a final good. That health is an intrinsic good is shown
chiefly on the basis of Plato’s conception of harmony, which always
represents a good state, regardless of any further effect. That health is
also a final good is justified by the constitutive role it plays in the indi-
 Introduction 9

vidual’s own conception of his or her happiness. In what sense health

fulfils that condition is the object of an intricate scrutiny that purports
to show that utility is not to be confined to instrumental goods, but –
as in the case of the virtues – includes their active contribution to hap-
piness. In the case of health this contribution consists in the fact that the
harmonious interaction of the parts of the soul presupposes the integra-
tion of the body’s appetites and desires. Thus health as an aspect of the
well-conditioned self turns out to be both a constitutive and a final
good, at least in a weak sense.

III. Aristotle

The contribution by Gðnther Patzig “Body and mind in Aristotle”, was

originally delivered as the opening presentation of the conference. After
providing a brief overview of the development regarding the relation
between body and mind in early Greek thought up to Plato, Patzig ex-
plains in what way the Aristotelian conception of the soul as the ‘first
actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it’ differs from all
previous models. He points out that it not only has the advantage of
overcoming the dualism of soul and body, but also constitutes a hier-
archical order of physiological and psychological functions that applies
to all living things, including plants. A key role is assigned to sense-per-
ception as a psycho-physical process, where the physical event and the
activity of consciousness turn out to be just two aspects of one and the
same process. Such a differentiation, according to Patzig, could serve as
the model in the present-day controversy on the relation between brain
and mind, since it neither requires a reduction of the mind to the brain
nor an incurable dualism, but instead treats mental phenomena as a spe-
cial class of physical events. The author does not pretend that this inter-
pretation of the problem removes all difficulties in defining the relation-
ship between brain and mind, but recommends the Aristotelian model
at least as a suitable basis for future solutions.
In his article “The priority of soul in Aristotle’s De anima: Mistaking
categories?” Christopher Shields starts out by first putting into question
the unity of body and soul, which is often regarded as a non-question,
because Aristotle seems to reject it as superfluous in a prominent passage
of De anima. As an explanation of this rejection, experts often refer to
the basic conception of Aristotle’s hylomorphism, according to which a
living thing is nothing but an ensouled body. Against this view, Shields
10 Introduction

objects that Aristotle does not regard the question of the unity of body
and soul as superfluous, but rather assumes that his conception of the
soul as the entelecheia of a natural organic body already represents an an-
swer – and one, moreover, that turns out to be far more complex than is
commonly assumed. For a proper understanding of Aristotle’s concep-
tion of the relation between the soul and other aspects to the organiza-
tion of living bodies requires not only explications of both the nature of
the priority that the soul has over the body, and of the nature of their
unity; in addition, it calls for an explanation of how the soul can be the
principle or cause of the live body. The author’s further discussion not
only works out with precision the kinds of tensions for the unity of
body and soul that result from the priority of the latter over the former,
but also the kind of solution that Aristotle’s conception of the relation-
ship allows for.
In “Aristotle on desire and action”, David Charles addresses the ques-
tion of whether the Aristotelian explanation of how the soul moves the
body is not disappointingly simplistic, because it does not even address
the fundamental question of how desire, a psychological phenomenon,
can cause motion, a physical process. On the basis of central passages on
this issue, De anima I 1 and De motu animalium 7 – 10, Charles shows that
Aristotle presupposes the inseparability of the psychological and physio-
logical aspects in affective behaviour in cases of anger and fear. The au-
thor then proceeds to make the plausible claim that Aristotle’s explan-
ation for the interconnection between ‘the passions of the soul’ (such
as desire) with the state of the body, are both based on the aforemen-
tioned presupposition. This approach represents an interesting alterna-
tive to the post-Cartesian positions of dualism, materialism, and func-
tionalism; given that such emotions as anger, fear or desire are psy-
cho-physical states, the question of how psychological forces can have
physical effects does therefore not arise in the sense presupposed by
post-Cartesians.
The ‘anatomy’ of the connection between soul and body is the topic
of the contribution by Friedemann Buddensiek, “Aristotle’s pineal gland?
Concerning the relation between soul and pneuma in Aristotle’s theory
of animal locomotion”. Aristotle’s views on the function of the pneuma
invite comparison with the function attributed by Descartes to the pine-
al gland: whereas the innate pneuma is described in De motu animalium 10
as serving a crucial role in the self-initiated movement of animals, Des-
cartes believed that the pineal gland was playing an analogous role. Ar-
istotle’s pneuma has, on the one hand, been treated as the material coun-
 Introduction 11

terpart of the striving that is responsible for the transformation of sense-

perception into the movements of the body; on the other hand it has
also been regarded as the instrument through which the soul sets the
body in motion. The crucial question that Buddensiek sets out to an-
swer is, then, which of the following alternatives is more in conformity
with the hylomorphic conception of the unity of body and soul. Is the
soul the form of the pneuma? Or is the pneuma a separate entity that
serves as the instrument of the soul? Or does the soul stand in some
other kind of relation to the pneuma?
In her article “Aporiae in the Aristotelian conceptions of the self-
controlled and the bad person”, Ursula Wolf addresses important prob-
lems of moral psychology that arise in Aristotle because of the interde-
pendence, in his view, between the acquired character-dispositions
(hexeis) and practical reason (phronÞsis), in the explanation of self-control
(enkrateia) on the one hand and of badness (kakia) on the other. Thus, it
is hard to see why Aristotle regards the bad person as internally torn and
full of remorse, given that he presupposes that the vicious person is con-
vinced of the correctness of his universal maxims, which conform to his
evil inclinations. Again, Aristotle’s view that the self-controlled person is
dispositionally prone to strong desires turns out to be rather hard to rec-
oncile with the alleged possession of phronÞsis, given that latter is suppos-
edly to be in conformity with the proper moral dispositions. In view of
these problems, the phenomenon of enkrateia should present a graver
problem for Aristotle’s moral psychology than the much debated ques-
tion of akrasia.

IV. The Academy

The question of what gaps there are in Plato’s account of the relation
between soul and body, as seen from the perspective of the Platonists
of the Old Academy is discussed in John Dillon’s contribution “How
does the soul direct the body, after all? Traces of a dispute on mind-
body relations in the Old Academy”. Specifically, Dillon addresses a
question concerning the Platonic dualism of body and soul that was al-
ready a concern to Plato’s immediate followers Aristotle and Heraclides
Ponticus: namely, how can Plato treat the soul like an incorporeal sub-
stance without giving any explanation, as his own dualistic perspective
pointedly requires, of how the soul nevertheless exerts control over
the body and its behaviour? In search of an answer, Dillon first looks
12 Introduction

at the Platonic dialogues that are central for this question, and then turns
to the solution proposed by Aristotle and Heraclides Ponticus that the
soul employs a certain substance, either fiery or aetherial in nature,
that comes between body and soul and that the soul employs as a ‘ve-
hicle’ when controlling the body. Dillon finally speculates, as an explan-
ation for Plato’s failure to recognize the aforementioned difficulty, that
Plato may not have believed in the real existence of the body, and
therefore may not have viewed questions concerning the relationship
between the soul and body as particularly problematic.

V. Hellenistic philosophy

As a matter of coincidence, all four contributions that are dedicated to

this epoch are concerned with the philosophy of the Stoa. That the top-
ics discussed may, at first glance, look somewhat marginal is due to the
fact that the Stoic conviction of the inseparability of soul and body and
its effect on questions of epistemology, psychology, and ethics has long
been at the center of scholarly discussions, while other aspects of Stoic
doctrine have received far less attention.
This certainly applies to the topic that is addressed by Tad Brennan:
“Stoic souls in Stoic corpses”. Different from what one might expect,
Brennan is not concerned with the relation of living persons to their
prospective physical remains after death, but with the question of
whether the Stoics, given their concentration on reason as the overall
active principle, are even able to do justice to the fact that humans
are composites of soul and body. If human beings are identified with
their soul, and the body is treated as a burden, it is easy to see why Epi-
ctetus, a late adherent to the Stoa, would see fit to call the body a corpse
(nekros). The reproach that the Stoics neglected the body, already raised
by Cicero, has prompted Brennan to subject this question to further in-
quiry. Since there are no reliable sources on this issue, Brennan ap-
proaches the question by attempting to reconstruct the ethical conse-
quences that are to be drawn within the Stoic system from their alleged
‘indifference’ to the body. This investigation leads Brennan to conclude
that while the Stoics identified the self with the soul, they regarded
human beings as a ‘systasis’ of soul and body. The fact that the composite
needs to be taken care of explains why, according to Brennan’s recon-
struction, the Stoics viewed physical well-being as one of the ‘preferred
indifferents’ but not as a good as such. If we accept that for the Stoics the
 Introduction 13

body does not count as a good, it is intelligible that from their perspec-
tive, the body could be regarded as a mere ‘corpse’, which the individ-
ual is forced to carry with him or her like so many other burdens
through life.
Keimpe Algra’s contribution is concerned with a question that forms
a central part of Greek popular religion, but whose treatment by the
Stoics is likely to be unknown even to most experts: “Stoics on souls
and demons: Reconstructing Stoic demonology”. As Algra notes, the
sources on this theme are few and scattered far and wide, so that a re-
construction of the original theory, or theories, is not easy. In addition,
demons seem not to have played an important role in Stoic cosmo-the-
ology so that one is tempted to regard them as marginal and slightly em-
barrassing Fremdkçrper in the Stoic system. The aim of Algra’s paper is
therefore to reconstruct the conception of demons that was endorsed
by various Stoics and the philosophical contexts in which this concep-
tion was used. Special attention is given to the Stoic concern to demon-
strate the compatibility of their rationalist theology with popular reli-
gious beliefs. Thus, the daimones are identified on the one hand with
the spirit of deceased heroes, and on the other hand as offshoots of
the divine pneuma where non-human demons are concerned. In addi-
tion, Algra points up the changes of doctrine that occurred within the
long history of the Stoic school and discusses the extent to which the
conception of daimones is compatible with their psychology and anthro-
pology, as well as with their theology.
As is indicated by its title, the article by Christopher Gill, “Galen and
the Stoics: what each could learn from the other about embodied psy-
chology”, raises a ‘What if…?’ question, regarding what the Stoics and
Galen could have learned from each other about the relation between
body and soul. For Galen, in his attempt to make the Platonic tri-par-
tition of the soul compatible with his own localization of it in the brain
could have profited from the Stoic postulate of a ‘hÞgemonikon’, just as
Galen’s brain-centered picture would have provided the Stoics with a
better foundation for their unified psychological theory than their
own location of that center in the heart. Gill concludes that together
with Galen’s anatomical studies, such a combination of Platonic and
Stoic elements could have in fact led to the development of the most
powerful and convincing account provided by ancient thinking on em-
bodied psychology. Galen’s massive attacks against the Stoics in On the
doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato can therefore be considered as a missed
14 Introduction

out Sternstunde for science in antiquity, and shows how prejudice can
stand in the way of progress.
Stoic ethics is the main concern of Martha Nussbaum’s comparison of
two Roman statesmen in “Philosophical norms and political attach-
ments: Cicero and Seneca”. Nussbaum investigates the question how
the strong emotions both men appear to have had towards Rome are
compatible with the Stoic injunction against emotions. Though Cicero
was no orthodox Stoic, in ethical matters he professed to share their
basic convictions. That there are tensions between Cicero’s moral con-
victions and his passionate feelings about Rome’s destiny – between
hope and despair – is witnessed most of all in his letters. The case of
Seneca is more complex, since his philosophical texts, including his
philosophical letters, paint, by and large, a consistent picture concerning
emotions towards one’s country. But the satire attributed to Seneca on
the Pumpkinification of the Emperor Caudius (Apocolocyntüsis) reveals a
wider range of emotional attitudes not easy to reconcile with the
Stoic ideal of freedom from all emotions. Nussbaum argues that al-
though the emotions expressed in that text, such as disgust, are not com-
patible with the Stoic injunction against strong emotions, they may rep-
resent transitional attitudes, corresponding to an intermediate stage be-
tween the excessive immersion in emotions characteristic of most peo-
ple, and the complete detachment befitting the sage.

VI. The philosophers of early christianity

Jonathan Barnes’ contribution, “Anima Christiana”, discusses the first ex-

tant work on psychology by a Christian author. This work rests on two
pillars: Christian doctrine and pagan theory. Thus, Tertullian explains
death as the punishment for the Fall, i. e. as the unnatural separation
of the substance of body and soul, and Resurrection as their natural re-
unification. As Barnes is intent to show, Tertullian’s doctrine does not
just rely on revelation; it also employs theories of pagan philosophers,
partly for polemical, but partly also for constructive purposes. This ap-
plies especially to Tertullian’s rejection of the Platonic conception of a
disembodied soul on the one hand, and his acceptance – within limits –
of the Stoic doctrine of pneuma on the other. It is highly amusing to read
how Tertullian, with more or less refinement, founds his doctrine of the
soul’s substance partly on rational arguments and partly on revelation,
and thereby comes to sometimes absurd, sometimes insightful results.
 Introduction 15

When Tertullian rejects ‘parts of the soul’ on the ground that they are
not instruments, but ‘powers’, Barnes agrees with him. But when Ter-
tullian finally treats the soul in its entirety as an instrument, Barnes sees
this as the fatal philosophical flaw that this new Christian psychology
shares with many other theories on the soul. According to Barnes,
the postulate that the soul is an entity of its own, and the treatment
of the soul as an entity in contrast with the body are fundamental phil-
osophical misconstructions. Here as elsewhere an agnostic often turns
out to be good at diagnostics.
The unification of soul and body at the moment of resurrection is
also the topic of Therese Fuhrer’s contribution: “The spirit in a perfect
body. A thought-experiment in Augustine’s De civitate dei 22.” In prin-
ciple, Augustine, under the influence of Plato, assigns a higher status to
the mental than to the corporeal. But given that the incorporeal form of
the soul’s future existence is incompatible with the doctrine of the res-
urrection of the flesh, Augustine establishes the conception of a ‘spiritual
body’ (corpus spiritualis). Such a body has organs that are free from any
blemishes; moreover, the spiritual body is neither subject to desires
nor to illnesses, nor to any other kinds of disturbance, so that it is pos-
sible for humans to live the paradisiacal life of a vir perfectus. In her treat-
ment of this thought-experiment, Fuhrer concentrates chiefly on the
premises and the logical form of Augustine’s arguments. Addressing
the question of whether those arguments are able to withstand strict
philosophical scrutiny, Fuhrer replies that to subject the work to such
scrutiny would miss Augustine’s real intentions. The main purposes of
the work, she argues, are catechetic and apologetic, and philosophical
arguments are employed only to the extent that they serve its supreme
religious purposes.
In more than one sense the contribution by Theo Kobusch, “Resur-
rection of the body”, brings this volume to its conclusion: The author’s
intention is to show that the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of
the body was understood by its adherents to represent the legitimate
successor of ancient conceptions of immortality. The Christian apolo-
gists were forced, however, to defend by philosophical means their be-
lief in immortality against the Gnostics, and also to meet the objections
of pagan philosophers, which focused on the doctrine of the resurrec-
tion of the flesh and on the Christian conception of the identity of
human existence. Moreover, later Christian works belonging to the
genre ‘De resurrectione’ are still to be understood as reactions to this
type of criticism. The character of the Christian replies to their oppo-
16 Introduction

nents varies, depending on the philosophical convictions of the Chris-

tian authors, as well as those of their opponents. And, as was the case
with Tertullian’s Anima Christiana, other Christian authors engaged
themselves with the theories of non-Christian philosophers not only
for polemical purposes, but also for the constructive purpose of advanc-
ing the development of Christian doctrine itself. Thus certain Christian
authors rehabilitated the corporeal existence of the whole human being
in opposition to the conception, Platonico more, of the body as a mere
receptacle, instrument, or vehicle of the soul. There were exceptions
to that rule: Gregory of Nyssa in his dialogue De anima et resurrectione
defends the Platonic point of view and thereby represents the Christian
completion of the Platonic belief in the immortality of the soul; this
work was therefore dubbed ‘a Christian Phaedo’.

The foregoing survey of the twenty-two contributions to this volume is

meant to provide an overall impression of the complexity and variety of
the philosophical debates on the body and soul in antiquity, debates that
lasted over a period of a thousand years. That there are important gaps in
the treatment of the philosophical tradition cannot be denied. For ex-
ample, this volume contains no discussion of the conception of body
and soul in the Epicurean school and also none on the Sceptics’ reaction
to the dogmata of the philosophers of the different schools. There are
also many aspects in the psychology of the great philosophers that are
not touched on here at all, as are some important developments in
late ancient philosophy. There is, for instance, no discussion of the dif-
ferentiated theories of the nature of the soul in Plotinus or in the Aris-
totelian and Neo-Platonist commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima. How-
ever, to render an exhaustive treatment of the variety of theories on the
nature of body and soul in antiquity could realistically neither be the aim
of the conference nor of the present volume, which contains its results.
To convey a comprehensive picture of the entire spectrum of the con-
ceptions of the soul and its relation to the body would have required an
expansion of the discussion beyond the borders of philosophy and an
inclusion of corresponding developments in literature and in the history
of religion. There is no better witness to the dimensions of such an en-
terprise than the still classical Urschrift on this most complex of themes,
Erwin Rohde’s Psyche of 1893.
The articles presented here thus confine themselves to the philo-
sophical treatment of the body-soul problem. The major objective of
this collection of papers, then, is to encourage students of philosophy
 Introduction 17

and, for that matter, of all other disciplines that are concerned with the
body-soul problem to further engage themselves with the questions
raised here and to provide some incentives for further study. As this in-
troduction, as well as various contributions to this volume together at-
tempt to show, the relevance of the thoughts of these philosophers is
not confined to antiquity; they are also worthy of careful study because
they paved the way for the further discussion of the body-soul question
– or as most philosophers now to prefer to call it, the mind-body prob-
lem – in the Middle Ages and in the modern age. In sum, this volume
tries to make intelligible why this discussion of the relation of body and
soul has not come to a conclusion to the present day.

Dorothea Frede/Burkhard Reis